Category: Games
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Back in New Zealand!
Hello again everybody. After a few days in Malaysia eating delicious noodles and pork buns, we arrived into New Zealand very early Wednesday morning. A day spent with Andrew, Sue’s brother in the Sylvia Park shopping mall and some Burger Fuel before Sue and I flew to Wellington for the start of our roadtrip down…
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Game of the Month January 2012
Welcome to this year’s first GOTM! This was a tricky one to choose as so many tournaments are being played currently. I was also not very up to date as had not been online for ten days or so over Christmas. However I found the following very interesting. Before we move on to the game…
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Game of the Month (just squeezing into December!)
Hi guys, As I wrote earlier I forgot to do the Game at the start of the month but here’s my game against Slavin as promised. I finished it a couple of days ago but was waiting for Sue to fix the pgn problem. I hope you enjoy and an update about the European Blitz…
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The London Classic – A delayed posting
UPDATE: Sue figured out the problem and now we have a pgn viewer back. I’d be in a lot of trouble without her! EDIT: At the moment I can’t get any of my pgn viewers to work so I’ll have to wait for my admin (Sue) to get back from work. Please bear with me!…
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European Team Championships – Porto Carras
Hello all. Apologies for not updating during the tournament but I had very little time and the internet was sporadic at best. I started this before the last round, which I didn’t think I was going to play, but the situation changed and in the end I played all nine. I had the 4ncl straightaway…
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Grand Prix is back..
Well not played by Gawain but by Vugar Gashimov of Azerbajin against Bulgaria’s Ivan Cheparinov. I read somewhere that this was also the opening Luke McShane used a few years ago to beat Cheparinov! ###pgn###[Event “European Team Championship”] [Site “Porto Carras GRE”] [Date “2011.11.09”] [EventDate “2011.11.03”] [Round “7”] [Result “1-0”] [White “Vugar Gashimov”] [Black “Ivan…
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Game of the Month – November
Lots of interesting chess this month so it was a tough decision what to examine. I considered a game of Kramnik’s as he has had some good results recently and is 2800 on the list published yesterday. However in the end I decided to examine this game between two players who always produce exciting encounters.…
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Corsica – Round nine and knockout
Friday morning I had White against Bulgarian GM Ivan Cheparinov. I again used the repertoire in my How to Beat the Sicilian. We actually followed a line from the first game in the entire book! He deviated at move nine but I followed the same plan. I reached a position with more space and a…
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Corsica – Rounds Seven and Eight
I was too exhausted to update after my round seven game. Black against Tal Baron, another young IM who has a rating above 2500. I expected him to play 1.e4 but he surprised me with 1.d4 when I decided to repeat the Dutch. He played the 2.Nc3 sideline but didn’t play the most critical move…
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Corsica – Round Six
A double round day meant not so much time to prepare and as my opponent seemed to play lots of different things I took it pretty easy. He chose 1…e5 and 2…Nc6. I decided to go for a Scotch and we followed the critical game Shirov-Kramnik from Wijk aan Zee in January. I deviated on…
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Corsica Rounds Three, Four and Five.
Apologies for not updating yesterday. I was simply too shattered after a 74 move game in the second game and only got back to the room at about 10.30pm. But let’s go in order. Round three I had Black against a Bulgarian IM, Radoslav Dimitrov. He played the English and I chose a sort of…
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Corsica – Round Two
Of course the big news of today was the Rugby. Glenn Flear headed over here early to join in watching the World Cup Final. To be honest, I didn’t think New Zealand played very well but their defences were strong and the All Blacks held on to defeat France 8-7 in a very tense game,…
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Corsica – Round One
This evening I played the opening round of the Corsica Masters. I was up against a kid from Switzerland: Alexis Skouvaklis, which sounds like he has Greek roots. I was Black and wheeled out the Dragon. This was actually my first pure Dragon since the draw with Mickey Adams at the British but I keep…
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My Bundesliga Début
This weekend I travelled to Cologne-Bonn airport to make my first appearance for SC Remagen. Our manager, Peter Noras, kindly met me at the airport despite feeling unwell and gave me a lift to our headquarters in Andernach. We stayed the night there and then were ferried across the 120km or so to Mulheim where…
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Mátar
We arrived back in England earlier today and, after a slight delay at the airport picking up an errant scarf, I travelled home and Sue off to work. We were both rather exhausted as we managed less than five hours sleep last night (in search of the errant Northern Lights but Sue will expand on…
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Galway Congress – A repeat success!
I’ve just returned home from Galway. I believe the last time I played was in 2007 according to the trophy – I managed a win that time too 🙂 I arrived in Galway on Thursday and played an 18 board simultaneous display at the Galway Bridge club. As is customary in simuls, I had White…